The Penguin Book of Witches Read Online Free Page A

witch-hunting manuals, which suggest that a witch can be reliably identified by another confessed conspirator.
    So, what caused it? What elusive factor sent a widespread community of pious New Englanders into a witch-fearing terror that would result in the death of nineteen innocent people at the hands of the state? Was it superstition? Rotten bread? Indians? Gender panic? Satan himself?
    In a sense, Salem was caused by all of these things (or rather, all of them except for rotten bread). The signal fact about Salem is that the panic did not take place in a vacuum. The Salem witch crisis exists as a set of interrelated phenomena along a historical continuum with both a past and, just as important, a future. Rather than being an aberrant expression of North American fears and attitudes about witchcraft, it should instead be seen as the
ultimate
expression of it. And therein lies the most alarming aspect of the Salem witch crisis—if Salem is not aberrant then it cannot be comfortably consigned to the past. Within this slippery historical continuum of behavior, precedent, practice, and response, witchcraft in North American religious and intellectual life becomes less safe to think about. This lack of safety, this persistent reminder of the inhumanity that a small community and its learned and trusted government can show its own members, lingers among us, a threat of what we could at any time still become.

EXAMINATIONS OF SARAH GOOD, SARAH OSBURN, AND TITUBA, TUESDAY, MARCH 1, 1692
    The examinations of Sarah Good and Sarah Osburn 1 continued within the normal bounds of witch trials; they were asked about their long-standing reputations for unusual or disagreeable behavior, like missing church or arguing with neighbors. The trials took a unique turn, however, in the examination and subsequent confession of Tituba. In this first examination, Tituba, like the other women, denied being a witch but then almost immediately confessed, blaming Good and Osburn for making her do it. She described the other witches who are part of the conspiracy, but did not name them save for Good and Osburn. The Devil who made her do it is described as a man in a tall hat with white hair and black clothes. More than one historian has pointed out that this description could apply quite well to her owner (and possible tormentor), Samuel Parris.
    Most important, according to A Discourse of the Damned Art of Witchcraft by William Perkins reproduced above, the word of a confessed witch is sufficient evidence to condemn another accused witch. So Tituba, through her confession and naming, condemned Good and Osburn as well as pointed to a wider group of witches as yet undiscovered. Tituba’s confession marks the moment at which the Salem trial branches into a different kind of legal and social event: from it stemmed the concept of a conspiracy with an unknown number of conspirators.
    Another important distinction is that the examinations were conducted in public. Generally, examinations of accused witches would be conducted in private to determine if evidence was sufficient to move to a public trial. In this case, the examinations themselves became unstable and, as historian Mary Beth Norton describes it, “explosive,” between the magistrates, who assumed the guilt of the accused; the accused themselves, who had to figure out how to answer the charges against them; the afflicted, whose torments grew more theatrical and acute with the presence of an audience; and the audience itself, tossing in unsolicited comments and inducements as the examinations took place. 2 The spectacle of these examinations must have been staggering. Even reading the transcripts today is a riveting exercise.
    The Examination
    The examination of Sarah Good before the worshipful assistants John Hathorn, Jonathan Corwin.
    [Hathorne]: Sarah Good, what evil spirit have you familiarity with?
    [Sarah Good]: None.
    [Hathorne]: Have you made no contract with the Devil?
    [Sarah Good]: Good